Twitter's Algorithms Set To Crack Down Abuse And Harassment

Looks like abusing or harassing people in Twitter could prove to be more difficult now. This is due to the new measures by the company.

According to an article at CS Monitor, Twitter has announced that it will start using algorithms to identify users engaging in potentially abusive behaviors, new filtering options that allow users to limit which type of accounts they see notifications from, and efforts to make abuse-reporting more transparent. These measures leverage with the company's goal of making the social network a safer and a more pleasant place to be.

Algorithms To Identify Users' Potentially Abusive Behaviors

The reports did not clearly specify in details as to how Twitter's new algorithm works. But Ed Ho, the social media company's vice president of engineering assures that the company is working to identify accounts that engage in abusive behaviors even if it hasn't been reported by other users. Furthermore, Twitter would also make the abusive accounts function for a certain amount period of time. Also, only the abusive accounts' tweets will only be visible to its followers.

New Filtering Options

As for the new filtering options of Twitter, users now have more control over what they see from certain types of accounts - these accounts are without a profile photo and unverified email addresses or phone numbers. Speaking about the "more control," users can now choose to stop seeing tweets from an account without unfollowing or blocking them. In addition, users can also remove keywords, phrases or entire conversations from their notification for a set amount of time.

Efforts To Make Abusive-Reporting More Transparent

Before, when users will report harassment or abuses, Twitter will only notify the sender via email when the harassment report has been received and decides to take action, making the senders kind of left out in a way. Now with the new update, the company will send an in-app notification about the status of reported tweets and accounts to the sender.